Today I managed to not have to serve on a jury again. This was probably about my ninth time to be called, I think, counting all the times in Lubbock, and I’ve lucked out every time. If I can just hold out just over seven more years, I’m home free.

They had 266 prospective jurors there but only needed a jury pool of 59, so they let the rest of us go after only about an hour — which is a shame, since I had packed like I was ready for Desert Storm. I had a tablet computer, backlogged issues of WIRED, headphones, and a huge amount of snacks. Seriously, huge.

This year for the first time we had to watch a video on how important juries are for our democracy, and it was illustrated with scenes from famous courtroom movies, and not just serious ones like The Verdict, To Kill A Mockingbird and Inherit the Wind. They also had parts of Liar Liar and My Cousin Vinny (mostly for the “This is what trials are NOT like” portions). Everybody in the room cracked up over hearing Herman Munster saying “Mr. Gambini … are yew on drugs??”